IRAQ: Thousands of citizens are now leaving their wartorn country ever day, writes Michael Jansen
The Iraqi national reconciliation conference, scheduled to take place on October 21st, has been postponed indefinitely as violence rages in Baghdad and the country's other major cities.
Since the conference was set to convene during Ramadan, the Muslim month of peacemaking as well as fasting, there was hope that Iraq's Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds would be compelled to reach accommodation on some basic issues and commit themselves to an effort to curb both insurgent and sectarian attacks.
The postponement of this conference, the latest of half a dozen which have been organised and then cancelled, coincided with the endorsement by the Holy Warriors' Consultative Council (Mujahideen Shura Majlis) of the establishment of a Sunni Islamic state in Baghdad and the Sunni heartland if Kurds and Shias form autonomous regions in the north and south.
The stand by the council, a body created to co-ordinate policy by Sunni fundamentalist resistance groupings, is seen as a response to the adoption by the Iraqi national assembly last week of controversial legislation providing for the emergence of Kurdish and super-Shia regions.
The bill is opposed by the Islamic Action Front and other Sunni factions, as well as three Shia parties. They argue that the formation of such regions will lead to the break-up of the country.
The cancellation of the high- level gathering took place against a background of increasingly deadly attacks on US forces and spreading sectarian warfare.
On Sunday, police in the northern oil city of Kirkuk were targeted by bombers just a week after Iraqi troops and police, bolstered by US forces, conducted a sweep to clear out insurgents.
Mosul, another key northern city, is also in the grip of violence, while the southern port of Basra, once a relatively peaceful place under British control, now suffers from Shia factional fighting.
During the first half of this month, 55 US troops have died in Iraq, as compared with 75 in September, while admissions to Baghdad morgues are more than 100 a day. The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that since the war began in 2003, the number of displaced people inside Iraq has reached 1.5 million - with 365,000 uprooted during 2006 - and those fleeing the country amount to 1.6 million.
An estimated 2,000 are crossing the frontier into Syria on a daily basis, while tens of thousands more are making their way to Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, the Gulf and Europe.
According to the UNHCR, Iraqis now form the largest single national group claiming asylum in Europe. Last year 50,000 returned to the country from neighbouring states. This year only 1,000 have done so.
International opinion has been shaken by the study published by Johns Hopkins University, which holds that between 392,979 and 942,636 - or a median figure of 655,000 - Iraqis have died as a result of the war. Although the findings are disputed by the Bush administration and some other analysts, the figures have forced officials and commentators to review low estimates given by Washington, the Iraqi government, Iraqi human rights groups and Iraq Body Count, UK-based volunteers who compile the toll of fatalities from newspaper reports. The group admits its figure of 43,800 - 48,700 does not convey the entire picture because most deaths are not reported.
In recent interviews, former US secretary of state James Baker leaked proposals due to be published after the November 7th elections. He said that if the Iraqi government cannot prove its viability by imposing security, achieving reconciliation and providing basic services within four or five months, the US should change strategy.
One option is a drive to stabilise Baghdad, combined with enlisting the help of insurgents, Iran and Syria. Another is an incremental redeployment of US troops to locations where they would not be embroiled in fighting but could contain the conflict within the country.